Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

While John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) is most known for his salon portraits, his late landscape paintings -- notably those completed from 1905 to 1917 -- mark an important departure for him. in them he explored stylistic avenues suggested by the late impressionists while reflecting a contemporaneous Victorian interest in unspoiled nature.

T. J. Jackson Lears places the late landscapes in the context of the time, travel, attention, and exploratory interest Sargent lavished upon them, examining them against the larger background of America's reconsideration of nature's place in the humanities. Sargent's "modernist" tendency as an experimental painter later in his career is the focus of Erica Hirshler's essay. Hilliard T. Goldfarb writes about Sargent's candid, sometimes amusing, often pithy, and practical observations on travel and work, using archival material at the Gardner Museum as well as Sargent's letters and recorded recollections by his circle of friends.

Table of Contents

Reconstructing nature: the rise and fall and rise of the American sublime, 1820-1920 / T.J. Jackson Lears -- "Huge skies do not tempt me": John Singer Sargent and landscape painting / Erica E. Hirshler -- Sargent in pursuit of landscapes in his own words: " I am off again to try the simple life (ach pfui)..." / Hilliard T. Goldfarb.